Comment 6 for bug 461418

Doughy and perhaps JuanDA will probably benefit from this:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1322002#6

To quote from 'teh_lukes' linked post:
"the folder ~/.local/share/gvfs-metadata became corrupted. deleting it solved the problem. don't know which file exactly."

After upgrading to Karmic Koala, I had noticed that my desktop icons had disappeared. That fix worked for myself (and 2 people on ubuntuforums).